Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

I don't know what methodology Shirley's company used. But yes, Teletype machines were very common in the mid-1960s.

For example, Tymshare, where I worked for several years, was founded in 1964. Their customers used Teletype machines at their own locations, dialing into a Tymshare mainframe and paying by the hour.

There were a number of similar timesharing companies in that era. Call Computer and Dial Data come to mind, along with Transdata where I worked in Phoenix before moving to the Bay Area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter

I had an office at Tymshare's Cupertino headquarters, and a Teletype at home to work remotely.

This proved handy one year when the company was doing some final acceptance tests on the Xerox Data Systems (XDS) Sigma 7. The problem was that all of us preferred the competing DEC PDP-10. So the company really wanted those tests to fail.

My manager called me into his office one day and said, "This conversation is strictly between you and me. You are our best Sigma 7 expert [I'd worked on the similar Sigma 5 at Transdata] and even you like the PDP-10 more. But at this point the only way we can get out of the Xerox deal is if the acceptance tests fail."

I took the hint, and the acceptance tests mysteriously started going haywire!

Eventually I failed to cover my tracks well enough, and Xerox spotted my username in a core dump.

Back to my manager's office. "Xerox figured out what you were doing, and we had to tell them we would fire you. So, you're fired. But you still have your Teletype at home? And you have plenty of other work to do on the PDP-10, right? Can you work from home unofficially and keep track of your hours? Just stay away from the Sigma 7. After this all blows over, we will re-hire you and pay you that back pay."

So I did, and they did!